2019 magazine

Believe the liberal arts are dead as doornails? Think again.

Anonymous — Sat, 28 Dec 2019 07:00:00 +0000

Believe the liberal arts are dead as doornails? Think again. Anonymous (not verified) Sat, 12/28/2019 - 00:00

James W.C. White

Advocates rise to dispute reports of the demise of a time-tested education

Mark Twain once remarked that “reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” That was funny. It was also memorable enough to have been repeated more or less constantly since.

But he didn’t say that, exactly. Let’s review the story and discuss why it matters.

In 1897, a reporter at the New York Journal informed Twain, then in London, of a report that Twain was impoverished and dying.

Twain said he understood the genesis of the rumor, noting that a cousin had been quite ill: “I have even heard it on good authority that I was dead,” he said, adding: “The report of my death was an exaggeration.”

The idea that Twain, famous worldwide, would die penniless in London was a compelling story. But it was not true, and the newspaper wisely checked the evidence before spreading a falsehood.

The liberal arts in higher education have a Mark Twain problem: There are many exaggerated reports of their death. A steady stream of news stories, opinion columns, blogs and television pundits have informed us over the last two decades that the liberal-arts education is a few breaths away from its death rattle.

Headlines have variously proclaimed that “Liberal arts degrees are useless,” that “There is no case for the humanities,” and that, bluntly, “Liberal arts majors are screwed.”

Today in the College of Arts and Sciences, the liberal arts—updated to include a broader range of subjects—remain central to the education of all students."

None of that is true, but steady repetition can give fiction a patina of prophecy.

This much is true: The falsehoods told about the liberal arts affected students’ behavior. Enrollment in these disciplines is down overall. Meanwhile, however, the career outcomes of liberal-arts graduates are good; the job market for workers with skills derived from the liberal arts is broad; and, importantly, those skills are key to students for the employment world of tomorrow.

Let’s first be clear on what we’re talking about.

WHAT ARE THE LIBERAL ARTS, ANYWAY?

The ancient Greeks had many good ideas. One of them, which we can credit to the city of Athens, was democracy, the foundation of our government and society. Another was that education—one that prepared citizens to steer the ship of state—was a foundation of democracy.

In Cicero’s thinking, autonomous individuals who earn the respect of their surrounding societies must be educated in a series of skills or practices to be effective citizens and stewards of democracy. He called these skills the artes liberales (“liberal arts”), and in their number he specifically includes geometry, music, literature, natural science, ethics and politics, including or especially skill in effective public speaking.

The fields we number among the liberal arts have grown in the 2,000 years since Cicero defined the notion, but the basic conception—the idea that the full range of these skills are needed to equip the citizens of free societies for full participation in democracy and in a life fulfilled on individual terms—remains the same.

Today in the College of Arts and Sciences, the liberal arts—updated to include a broader range of subjects—remain central to the education of all students. But the reports of their demise have had an effect.

ENROLLMENT HAS DIPPED

The Great Recession of 2007-09 was a tipping point. When the economy sputtered, American college students began turning away from degrees in history, philosophy and political science and opting to study science, technology, engineering or math—often called STEM.

Since then, U.S. college enrollment in liberal arts degrees has seriously declined. Nationwide, the numbers are stark:

• Philosophy and religious studies: down 15%.

• English literature and composition: down 22%.

• History: down 25%.

The trend has hit harder at ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ, as these numbers show:

• Philosophy and religious studies: down 12%.

• English literature and composition: down 49%.

• History: down 57%.

Meanwhile, enrollment in the natural sciences, math and engineering has soared. Those trends are alarming because we need a broad range of workers—from all disciplines—in the new and emerging workplace.

I say this as a scientist who has spent decades studying how our planet functions and how the Earth’s climate is changing. Because humans are the major agents of change on the planet, this work has required that I understand how humans operate—the sphere of fields ranging from economics to ethics.

I’m a scientist who knows that a broad liberal-arts education is widely applicable, greatly needed and significantly helpful to job-seekers and the companies that hire them.

A liberal-arts education—one that exposes students to the breadth of human knowledge—conveys skills in critical thinking, communication and adaptability.

As the pace of social and technological change inexorably quickens, these skills are indispensable, not only to the employee possessing those skills, but also to the society in deep need for its citizens to exercise those skills.

That’s my well-grounded opinion. But don’t take my word for it. Reams of evidence buttress this point.

JOBS, SALARIES AND DEBT: BETTER THAN YOU THINK

First, people with college degrees—regardless of whether those degrees were in the arts and humanities, social sciences or natural sciences—enjoy consistently lower rates of unemployment than the rest of the workforce.

Second, getting a college degree pays big dividends: On average, college graduates earn $1 million more over the course of their careers than those who have only a high-school diploma.

Third, student debt is a real issue, but one that ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ works hard to manage with scholarships and other support. For those Colorado residents who graduated from ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ with a bachelor’s degree in 2018, the average debt was $24,400. For out-of-state students, the average was $32,100.

Those numbers are nothing to sneeze at. For in-state students, however, the debt is lower than the cost of a new Ford Taurus, and for out-of-state students, it’s about equal to a new Taurus with all the options.

Of course, the value of the Taurus will depreciate, while the college degree’s value will appreciate by almost a factor of 50. In short, your Taurus won’t take you nearly as far as your degree.

It must be noted that students who major in scientific, technological or engineering fields tend to earn higher salaries than those in the arts and humanities. It’s also true that starting salaries of students who majored in the arts and humanities tend to be lower than those in the natural sciences.

But let’s compare those who major in professional or pre-professional degrees with those with liberal-arts degrees:

When they reach their 50s and 60s, former students who majored in the social sciences or arts and humanities earned more, on average, than their peers who majored in professional or pre-professional fields, research from the Association of American Colleges and Universities concluded in 2014.

Data from ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ alumni buttress this finding. Consider an exhaustive study of alumni who graduated from the ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ College of Arts and Sciences in the last three decades.

That research, conducted by Emsi Alumni Insight, surveyed more than 25,000 alumni who graduated with bachelor’s degrees between 1989 and 2018 and calculated their average salary in 2018 as follows:

• $79,626: arts and humanities alumni

• $78,065: social sciences alumni

• $80,796: natural sciences alumni

By comparison, median household income in Colorado was $62,520 in 2017, the U.S. Census Bureau reports.

If you want to learn more about these stats, see the data visualization at http://bit.ly/alumstats. Those who seek evidence that the liberal arts are faltering will have to look elsewhere.

Diving into the data deepens the picture. As The Washington Post noted recently, it’s true that the typical computer-science major earns more right out of school than does the typical English major.

But in 2017, young English majors had a lower unemployment rate than math or computer science majors. And the pay gap closes as higher midcareer salaries in management and business occupations kick in—professions with larger numbers of liberal arts majors.

SIGNS AND REASONS FOR LIFE

Despite all the bad press, there are great reasons the liberal arts are still alive and kicking. First among them is that employers see the value in skills students derive from a liberal-arts education. And they’re willing to pay for those skills.

More than 84% of employers surveyed by the American Association of Colleges & Universities said recent graduates who wanted to win promotions and enjoy long-term success should have field-specific knowledge and a broad range of knowledge or skills.

Further, 93% of those employers said that job candidates’ ability to think critically, communicate clearly and solve complex problems well is more important than their undergraduate major.

Many other studies tell the same story: Companies need employees with well-honed skills in critical thinking and communication.

A particularly compelling example comes from Google, which is, at its core, an engineering firm, one that assumed the best workers would—obviously—be engineers. Google being Google, it tested its hiring hypothesis by crunching every bit and byte of hiring, firing and promotion data accumulated since the company’s incorporation in 1998, The Washington Post reported.

“Project Oxygen shocked everyone by concluding that, among the eight most important qualities of Google’s top employees, STEM expertise comes in dead last,” the Post noted.

The seven top characteristics of success at Google are all “soft” skills: being a good coach; communicating and listening well; possessing insights into others (including others’ different values and points of view); having empathy toward and being supportive of one’s colleagues; being a good critical thinker and problem solver; and being able to make connections across complex ideas.

Other studies reinforce this point. In 2019, economists Catharine B. Hill and Elizabeth Davidson Pisacreta, with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, issued a detailed analysis of the economic payoff of a liberal-arts education.

“Critics claim that a liberal arts education is worth less than the alternatives, and perhaps not even worth the investment at all. They argue that increasing costs and low future earnings limit the value of a liberal arts education, especially compared to alternative options such as pre-professional programs that appear to be better rewarded in the current labor market,” says the report, adding:

“Existing evidence does not support these conclusions.”

But money is only part of the picture. Other studies show that graduates of the humanities are not only gainfully employed but also—importantly—happy. A report issued by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2018 notes that while humanities majors do make less money as they begin their careers than engineers or natural scientists, they felt comparable levels of satisfaction to those in engineering with the money they earned.

Why? The likely answer is that more than 70% of both humanities majors and engineers felt “deeply interested” in their work. We’re not all born to be engineers or STEM majors; doing what you love to do is far more important in the end and a much better predictor of success than chasing the lure of a higher salary.

All of this underscores the fact that the liberal arts are neither dead nor dying.

BUT WHAT ABOUT TOMORROW?

The past is often prologue, but the blistering pace of technological and social change today complicates our accuracy in predicting the workplace of tomorrow.

There’s good evidence, however, that students now in school can expect to change careers five to seven times. In many cases, the jobs they will perform do not yet exist, and skills they’ll need may have yet to be developed.

Preparing for such a world will require more than technical skills, as important as they are. Preparing for such a world means learning how to learn, to adapt and to articulate complexity clearly.

Preparing for such a world means learning how to learn, to adapt and to articulate complexity clearly."

In other words, skills in critical-thinking and communication will be necessary.

We see evidence of this already, in the workplace of the last decade. If the conventional wisdom about STEM education were true, we’d expect to see a particularly high demand for employees with math or technical skills but not other skills.

A recent study found just the opposite. That study, by Harvard University economist David Deming, found that jobs requiring high math and high social skills are rising, while jobs that require neither are shrinking, observations that should surprise no one.

However, the observation that jobs that require high social skills but low math skills are growing—while jobs requiring high math skills and low social skills have been declining for the past several decades— may indeed surprise people. The bottom line is that social skills and critical-thinking skills are both valuable and highly marketable. Similarly, Deming found, pay for people with high social skills has been rising.

Let’s be clear here: We need specialists, engineers, scientists and technicians. We also need historians, philosophers, poets, economists, linguists and political scientists.

Thriving in our rapidly growing and increasingly intertwined world requires that all of us pursue our passion and purpose. Our success as a representative democracy depends not only on clever technological advances, but also on our ability to understand ourselves, our humanness, our strengths and our weaknesses.

Next time you try out a particularly frustrating app that seems to be designed for a very technically literate human that does not commonly exist, remember that.

As we have seen, public opinion has wrongly portrayed the study of the liberal arts as irrelevant and futile. Drawn from hyperbole, that view is a myth. I’m happy to say that I’m not alone in pointing out the truth. In the last two years, a large and growing number of op-eds, news stories and blog posts have made the points that I’ve made here.

This brings us back to Mark Twain. When confronted with a rumor about Twain, a New York journalist checked the facts and published the truth. That’s my mission here.

That’s the kind of critical-thinking skill the world needed then, needs now and will need tomorrow.

It’s the kind of critical thinking skill that is part of the core of a liberal arts education. And that’s one of many reasons that reports of the liberal arts’ demise are, in fact, an exaggeration.

The ancients would be proud.

James W.C. White is interim dean of the College of Arts & Sciences.

Mark Twain once remarked that “reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” That was memorable enough to have been repeated ever since. But he didn’t say that, exactly. Let’s review the story and discuss why it matters.

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Visionary hopes to improve eyesight for millions

Anonymous — Mon, 07 Oct 2019 16:18:33 +0000

Visionary hopes to improve eyesight for millions Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 10/07/2019 - 10:18

Doug McPherson

Alumnus’ ski trip inspires an insight that could help give the world’s poor better vision

The idea for a potentially game-changing way to help poor people see better hit Philip Staehelin as he floated above a peaceful snowscape on a ski lift in the Czech mountains.

It’s unsurprising that Staehelin (pronounced STAYlen) gets plenty of good ideas regularly. “My father was a professor of cellular biology at CU … he was also always curious … [and] I learned my curiosity from him, and then squared it,” says Staehelin (’91 intl. affairs/econ.).

Philip Staehelin. At the top of the page is an image by Mohammad Hosein Mohebbi on Unsplash.

What’s more, Staehelin’s passion for innovation has made him well-known and respected in the business circles of Prague (his home since 1994) and Central Europe. Today he advises many companies and startups and co-owns Central Europe’s oldest startup accelerator, plus he holds an MBA from INSEAD, often ranked the top business school in the world.

But it’s ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ’s liberal arts education he credits for kick starting his creativity. “It’s all about constantly challenging the status quo … thinking how something can be done differently. It gives you a better chance to become a creative rule breaker that can recreate the world around us.”

His idea clearly had that recreate-the-world feel to it and it could transform the entire eye-care model for the world’s poorest people.

Staehelin had some real insight. He got glasses at age 9 and suffered from poor vision until he had laser surgery about 15 years ago. “I went from roughly 20/500 to perfect vision—which was life changing,” he says.

Then about 10 years after that surgery, his vision deteriorated to 20/40, and he needed glasses again. It was through that lens the big idea came into focus on that ski lift in early 2015.

“I don't like to wear my glasses under my ski goggles, so I just went without—which isn't a big deal when you have 20/40 vision. But there was a point during the day when the moguls got a bit hard to see, and as I was riding back up the mountain … I thought it would be cool if I could just buy some off-the-shelf lenses to pop into my ski goggles to improve my vision. I thought just a bit of improvement would be good enough, because I didn't need perfect vision for skiing.”

So the idea started as a cheap solution for prescription ski goggles. Nifty for sure, but after a few more runs, it struck Staehelin that "good enough" might address the developing world's vision problem—what some call the biggest health crisis you’ve never heard of. The World Health Organization says untreated vision problems cost the global economy $200 billion annually in lost productivity, and the Vision Loss Expert Group says 1.1 billion people need eyeglasses but don’t have them: people unable to drive, read, work or just enjoy the orange glow of a setting sun.

DOT Glasses are designed around one stock frame size with snap-together parts. By manufacturing only one design and one size for all parts, the goal is to significantly reduce cost, thereby making eyeglasses affordable worldwide, the firm says.

When Staehelin got home, he did some research and calculated he’d only need five lenses to give up to 90 percent of people "good enough" vision, i.e. getting people to at least 20/40 vision.

“I was excited, and I literally felt like I had an obligation to society to give it my best shot.”

It would take his best shot—and patience. After more than three years and plenty of design failures, he finally had his ultra-cheap, one-size-fits-all frames—and his social enterprise, DOT Glasses (dotglasses.org), was born.

During the first field trial in Angola in August of 2018, the team saw just how much the glasses could change lives. They met Samuel, a young man who had lost his job—literally the previous week—because his eyesight had worsened so much that he could no longer do his work.

They tested his vision and fitted him with the first pair of DOT Glasses—a 3-D printed prototype.

“We felt good that things worked as we thought they would,” Staehelin says.

But they felt even better when they ran into Samuel on the street a few days later, purely by chance, wearing his new glasses.

“He was incredibly happy because he had found another job. He was absolutely beaming. Just telling that story gives me chills. It was the first realization after more than three years of often lonely work that we were really on to something that could change people’s lives in a truly tangible way.”

By late summer of 2019, about 1,000 people like Samuel were wearing DOT Glasses. And after a recent commercial launch, its pipeline of sales is approaching 1 million eyeglasses with strong interest from partners all around the world.

Staehelin’s vision for the future: fit millions of glasses annually.

“I want to prove that a 700-year-old technology like eyeglasses can still be disruptive with innovative thinking.”

Some might call that visionary.

Alumnus’ ski trip inspires an insight that could help give the world’s poor better vision.

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Evidence of climate-driven conflicts is piling up

Anonymous — Wed, 18 Sep 2019 23:26:19 +0000

Evidence of climate-driven conflicts is piling up Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 09/18/2019 - 17:26

Lisa Marshall

Climate has played a small but important role in fueling civil wars and other conflicts, researchers find

On a sweltering July afternoon in the remote village of Daaba in Northern Kenya, ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ Geography Professor John O’Loughlin was stood up by a tribal chief.

John O'Loughlin

O’Loughlin and his colleagues had driven for hours along dusty roads in the drought-ravaged region to interview the local leader about if, and how, climate change is impacting violence levels there. The moment they pulled up, they got some answers.

“We were told he’d been gone three days,” O’Loughlin recalls, describing how 30 raiders had swept through the village earlier that week, stealing 100 head of cattle and prompting the chief and an armed party to go after them. “My guess is, if they caught up with them, it ended in violence.”

The recent, mid-summer raid in Daaba is among countless small-scale clashes igniting across the African continent and elsewhere around the world as shifting rainfall patterns, rising temperatures, natural disasters and other climatic shifts help push simmering ethnic, religious and political tensions to a violent boiling point.

Climate change is not, in and of itself a risk, but it works through other risks creating a multiplier effect."

In recent decades, climate-related factors have played a small but important role in fueling civil wars and other armed conflicts, influencing between 3% and 20% globally, according to a June study co-authored by O’Loughlin and published in the journal Nature. But with global temperatures projected to rise 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit by centuries end (in the absence of substantial greenhouse gas emission reductions) one in four armed conflicts will soon be a result of a changing climate, the paper suggests.

“These will be the wars of the future,” says O’Loughlin, a researcher with the Institute for Behavioral Science and a leading scholar in the study of so-called “climate wars.”

“I have done dozens of interviews with local elders in Africa and there is a general sense that, while they have managed to share resources and cooperate so far, it is getting harder and harder to keep a lid on the violence due to climate change.”

The final spark

The link between climate change and armed conflict has been hotly disputed. Some scholars have pointed to conflicts in Syria and Darfur (Sudan) as quintessential climate wars fueled by drought-sparked migration. Others, including O’Loughlin, have been more skeptical in the past, pointing to corrupt regimes, poverty and ethnic and religious differences as the primary culprits.

But the new Nature paper—a Stanford-led collaboration between 11 experts from political science, economics, environmental science, peace studies and other disciplines—marks a newfound consensus on the matter. It’s bottom line: Yes, climate change helps fuel violent conflict, and it’s poised to get worse.

“Climate change is not, in and of itself a risk, but it works through other risks creating a multiplier effect,” O’Loughlin says.

He still believes that things like unstable government, vast economic inequalities within societies and a history of violence are all bigger and more certain drivers of conflict.

But as he has seen firsthand through his field research, piling drought or flooding or loss of crops—and the suffering that results—on top of those vulnerabilities can push things over the edge, leading more young men in particular to take up arms.

A young girl stands amid the freshly made graves of 70 children, many of whom died of malnutrition, in Dadaab, a refugee camp in Kenya. Children have walked for weeks across the desert to get to Dadaab, and many perish on the way. Others have died shortly after arrival. Photo: Andy Hall/Oxfam

In one study, O’Loughlin found that when temperatures rose two standard deviations higher than the long-term average in a region—roughly 2 degrees F for a place like Kenya—violent conflict soared by 30%.

Migration also plays a role. As water sources dry up, and people relocate to find sustenance for animals and fertile ground for crops, they are often met with resistance from those already strapped for resources. In one 2018 study, O’Loughlin and colleagues found that Kenyans who relocated temporarily due to drought were three times more likely to be subjected to violence.

“There are expected to be huge migration outflows from areas that are strongly affected by climate change. Some places will frankly be unlivable,” he says.

Already, such factors are fueling bloody clashes between roaming cattle herders and farmers. In Nigeria alone, according to Amnesty International, more than 2,000 people were killed in such conflicts in 2018.

There are expected to be huge migration outflows from areas that are strongly affected by climate change. Some places will frankly be unlivable.”

“That’s more people than were killed by the terrorist group Boko Haram, but you rarely hear about this in the news,” notes O’Loughlin.

He recently spent several weeks in Northern Kenya with Anthropology Professor Terry McCabe and graduate student Sarah Posner, interviewing tribal leaders and kicking off a new study in which he will use cell phones to survey 500 locals every two months for a year about how shifting weather patterns are impacting their livelihood and exposure to violence.

When he first arrived in the study area of Isiolo, he spotted newspaper headline that read “2 million people at immediate risk of starvation.”

“Pasture-lands are drying up, people are hungry, and raiders are stealing from their neighbors,” he said. “Everyone is worried about climate change.”

In addition to a vast humanitarian toll, the looming threat of climate wars could present a global security risk, he adds, as beleaguered young men in drought or flood-stricken areas grow more tempted to join militant groups.

But he believes many of these scenarios can be prevented through investments in things like crop insurance, post-harvest storage facilities and more resilient water systems in regions hit hard by shifting weather patterns.

Now that there is some long-awaited consensus around the issue, he hopes policy makers will take notice.

“The question now is: To what degree will the developed world ignore this issue and to what degree will it get involved?”

Climate has played a small but important role in fueling civil wars and other conflicts, ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ and other researchers find.

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From ‘major identity crisis’ to career fulfillment

Anonymous — Sat, 17 Aug 2019 21:06:22 +0000

From ‘major identity crisis’ to career fulfillment Anonymous (not verified) Sat, 08/17/2019 - 15:06

Doug McPherson

'I realized it’s important to follow what you love … and it’s OK to try something else, pivot and take risks and even pivot back'

The first three semesters as a psychology major at the University of Colorado Boulder couldn’t have been better for Caroline Lynch (Psych’07). The classes were stimulating and gratifying—even fun. And her grades were high.

Caroline Lynch

“I’ve always had a passion for psychology and so I applied to CU as a psych major,” Lynch says. “What drew me in was the diversity … I was studying everything from organizational development to learning processes, and I really found all of it applicable to everyday life.”

But then, in the middle of her sophomore year, she had what she called her “major identity crisis,” not a crisis of identity, but a crisis of major, as in which one to choose for a career.

“I began feeling pressure about what I wanted to do when I graduated, and I started to question if my psych degree would get me there,” she says.

She wasn’t even sure what “there” was. She did know she didn’t want to be a psychologist, so she considered switching majors or at least adding a minor in marketing or communications.

Psychology helped build a foundation to evaluate raw data, organize it in clear, concise ways and make reasoned, rational decisions. It taught me to think critically, manage complexity, communicate clearly and solve complex problems."

She had a marketing internship lined up for the coming summer with a Boulder startup, so she decided to take some communications courses in her second sophomore semester. A few weeks in, she was miserable. “The content wasn’t as interesting or fulfilling as psych classes,” Lynch says.

After more soul searching she returned to psychology. The experience—as prickly as it was—has become a valuable life lesson. “I realized it’s important to follow what you love … and it’s OK to try something else, pivot and take risks and even pivot back. Curiosity, exposure to many diverse experiences, and being open all serve me well.”

Today, Lynch will tell you she has zero regrets sticking with liberal arts.

Right out of Boulder, Lynch landed a job with the top beauty company in the world, L’Oreal.And over the next 10 years, she rose through the ranks from entry management to an assistant vice president’s post. Last fall she left L’Oreal, where she was managing a team to being the team—of one—as director of sales planning in personal care at Method Products, PBC, a pioneer in green consumables.

She says both companies have helped her build her career and skills—skills she first discovered at ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ, and skills that have proved essential every step along her path.

“Psychology helped build a foundation to evaluate raw data, organize it in clear, concise ways and make reasoned, rational decisions. It taught me to think critically, manage complexity, communicate clearly and solve complex problems."

Like many in the working world, Lynch says change is the constant in her life, and her time at ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ taught her to make change work for her. “The mental muscle I developed studying psychology let me adapt, pivot, manage and excel amid all the change. Going from a statistics class, to organizational psych course, to a philosophy course all in one day helped me approach situations, challenges and experiences from different frameworks.”

Her career advice to newly employed ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ alumni: Say yes. Get involved. Try new things. Get diverse experience—all of which she says helped her discover careers she didn’t even know existed but that now she enjoys.

“And finally, challenge yourself. Get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Always stretch yourself, and don’t be afraid to apply for positions that sound like they’re a stretch for you.”

As for skills employers want, Lynch says creativity along with entrepreneurial and innovative thinking top the list.

She adds: “A liberal arts degree sets a strong foundation for all of these skills.”

“I began feeling pressure about what I wanted to do when I graduated, and I started to question if my psych degree would get me there,” says alum who stayed the course and succeeded.

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Amsterdam to ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ, by rail, boat, bus and bike

Anonymous — Wed, 10 Jul 2019 15:27:33 +0000

Amsterdam to ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ, by rail, boat, bus and bike Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 07/10/2019 - 09:27

Clay Bonnyman Evans

Climate researcher eschews air travel on 8,000-mile ‘commute’ to take up INSTAAR position

Climate scientist Joep van Dijk was excited when he received a postdoctoral appointment to the Institute of Alpine and Arctic Research at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Climate scientist Joep van Dijk near the coast of St. Lucia in the Caribbean. At the top of the page, Dijk is pictured riding near Colorado Springs along Fountain Creek. Images courtesy of Joep van Dijk.

But the good news also presented a conundrum: Concerned about his personal carbon footprint, he didn’t want to fly from his home in Amsterdam to take up the new job. According to some studies, a round-trip flight from New York to Europe can create a warming effect equivalent to 2 or 3 tons of carbon dioxide per person, or nearly 16 percent of the average American’s annual carbon output.

“I thought, ‘I have three months, let’s see if I can get to Colorado without flying,’” says van Dijk, who specializes in paleo-oceanography and paleoclimatology.

He’d soon come up with an ambitious plan: He’d sail across the Atlantic, then bike from his U.S. port of call to Boulder. And that’s just what he did, in 87 days.

“I arrived by bike in Boulder Sunday, March 31,” he says. “Monday was my first day of work.”

The time and effort to make his more-than-8,000-mile journey was considerable, but worth it, van Dijk says.

“When I arrived at my new house in Boulder, I met a woman and the first thing she asked was, ‘How much did you grow throughout your trip?’ It’s such a good question” — and unlike the usual questions he got along the way, he says. “The answer is that I have grown as much as I would have in five years’ time. I would not underestimate the personal development you may experience if you take a slower way to travel.”

More than anything, van Dijk wanted his slow-boat-and-bike trip to serve as an example.

“It’s not that difficult. It takes a bit of energy, but it will make you pretty happy in the long term to know that you didn’t contribute to the (climate change) problem,” he says. “And I’m pretty sure that within a couple of decades, all these things I’m doing will become normal.”

He took video and photos along the way, and is now crowdfunding to raise funds to produce a documentary titled, “Carbon Dioxide? That’s Not Right!”

“Initially, I didn’t want to make a movie of it,” van Dijk says. Then his sister, Puck van Dijk, gave him a present for his PhD graduation on one condition: “I’ll give you this drone, but only if you document the entire trip.”

Van Dijk started his odyssey by searching online for someone to sail with. That’s where he met Captain Robert Bachmann, a German man planning to sail his roughly 40-by-15-foot catamaran, Namaka—named after a Hawaiian sea goddess—from the Canary Islands to the Caribbean.

Van Dijk had participated in a “couple of sailing camps” growing up in the Netherlands, but was no seasoned sailor. In order to gauge how he might fare on a three or four week transatlantic journey, Bachmann agreed to meet him in Spain for a six-day shakedown cruise to the Canary Islands.

“I’d never done something like this before,” Van Dijk says. “We wanted to see if it would be a match, a sort of trial, for seasickness and things like that.”

Van Dijk left Amsterdam by train Jan. 2 for Almeria, Spain, where he met Bachmann. Sailing through the straits of Gibraltar to Las Palmas, on the island of Gran Canaria, he passed his shakedown practicum with flying colors.

“He took me on for two reasons. He liked the idea of a documentary, and was a documentary maker himself. And if need be, he was capable of doing the crossing himself, without help,” van Dijk says.

The Namaka embarked from Las Palmas with Bachmann, van Dijk and two German passengers aboard on Jan. 18. They encountered mostly smooth sailing over the next several weeks, except for some doldrums—areas of low or no wind—that forced the captain to alter his route, and arrived in Barbados on Feb. 10.

When the other two passengers decided to leave the expedition earlier than anticipated, Bachmann asked van Dijk to crew for another couple of weeks’ sailing around the Caribbean, from St. Lucia to George Town, capitol of the Bahamas.

“That was also a very nice and interesting part of the trip,” van Dijk says. “It’s a lot of work to manage a big boat with just two people.”

From George Town, he took three ferries to Florida, where he boarded a red-eye Greyhound bus for New Orleans. There, he bought a bike and began the final, 1,400-mile leg of his journey on March 11. Three weeks later, he showed up at INSTAAR to start his new position researching—as he put it in lay terms—“How did the earth’s marine ecosystem respond to the meteorite that wiped out the dinosaurs?”

Van Dijk has been interested in climate science since high school, where he designed a solar panel with an eye toward fueling his school through solar energy. Undergraduate research in Spain showed him the importance of the geological record in understanding climate issues. As a graduate student, he worked in Switzerland helping to reconstruct the terrestrial climate of the early Eocene period.

His increasing knowledge about climate change inspired van Dijk to begin making changes to his lifestyle. He became a vegetarian—a 2016 study by scientists at the University of Oxford found that widespread adoption of a vegetarian diet would reduce carbon emissions by as much as 63 percent, and a vegan diet by as much as 70 percent—and began to balk at having to fly to conferences and do field work.

Van Dijk recognizes how deeply ingrained luxuries such as air travel and meat-based diets have become in the lives of many Americans. But, he says, it’s possible to make changes incrementally, such as by starting with a “meatless Monday” then increasing the number of meatless days. And he believes that “slow travel” is ultimately more rewarding than winging it to a beach for a week and returning, exhausted and harried.

“My own trip took 87 days. There is a lot of stuff to be seen between Boulder and the Mediterranean,” he says. “If you take a plane to the other side of the world, apart from the fact that it’s completely unnatural and you have no time to adapt, you also miss everything in between.”

A transition to slower travel would require fundamental shifts in how Americans work, he acknowledges, including shorter hours and more vacation time. But that’s all to the good, van Dijk says.

“In Scandinavia, there are 30-hour work weeks, and productivity actually goes up,” he says. “And especially in the U.S., we must leave behind the two-week (vacation time); it must become at least six weeks.”

In the end, he says, taking personal action to mitigate climate change will make us happier.

“As a geologist, I’m trained to think in terms of 50 or 60 million years. Of course, I care about my own life, and I take pleasure in life once in a while,” he says.

“But when you look at your own life and try to make sustainable choices, that will make you happy. Because what is the point of personal growth and happiness if you cannot pass it on? Your grandchildren won’t be able to experience the same things as you, and I think that’s very selfish.”

Climate researcher eschews air travel on 8,000-mile ‘commute’ to take up INSTAAR position.

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��ý�Ļ��Ʒ grad licks problem of slippery cell phones

Anonymous — Fri, 14 Jun 2019 15:18:11 +0000

��ý�Ļ��Ʒ grad licks problem of slippery cell phones Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 06/14/2019 - 09:18

Clay Bonnyman Evans

Her invention and new company, CatTongue Grips, was born because no other product offered grippiness without scratching

In March 2015, Matt Kelly walked into a Verizon store in Park City, Utah, to upgrade his phone. When he commented to a salesperson how easy it is to drop a phone, slippery as they are, she offered to sell him an expensive insurance plan.

Co-founder Missy Kelly

Instead, Kelly—who grew up in the skater and surfer culture of San Diego—drove over to a nearby skateboard shop, bought some grip tape, and slapped it on the back of his new phone.

“I said, ‘What have you got going on here?’” recalls his wife, Missy Kelly (PolSci, IntAf‘94). “He said, ‘I love this thing. It grips and it’s not sliding around.”

There was just one little problem: “It felt like a cat tongue…and the sandpaper surface was going to scratch up everything in the house!” she says. So, he challenged her to find him something online that would measure up to grip tape, minus the scratching.

“I couldn’t find anything,” Missy Kelly remembers, “so we decided to make it.”

Two and a half years later, CatTongue Grips, a soft, self-adhesive, anti-slip accessory that can be easily applied and removed from the back of any mobile phone, debuted on Amazon Exclusives.

The company racked up more than $65,000 in sales its first year and is now available in 45 college bookstores around the country, multiple retail outlets, the company’s online store and Amazon. CatTongue Grips has also partnered with numerous organizations to create branded grips, from the University of Southern California to U.S. Ski & Snowboard and Spartan.

But CEO Missy Kelly—her husband is executive vice president—says it took time to get the material and product just right.

“It took us six months just to get a meeting with the largest manufacturer of non-slip solutions in the world,” she says. “They said ‘We’ve never seen anything like it. We’ll get scientists on it and make it for you.’”

One year and eight prototypes later, they had a product. “Not only did it feel good in the hand,” Kelly says, “It gripped and didn’t pick up hair, lint or dirt.” And of course, it didn’t scratch.

The company now has a patent pending on the material and recently launched its second product line, the Phat Cat Grip Collection, for tablets and laptops. This summer, it will introduce rolls of material so that users can cut to whatever size desired for home improvement, tools, rugs on wood floors, sporting, boating, camping—“Anything that needs a grip!” Kelly says.

As videos made by CatTongue Grips show, the material helps prevent phones and laptops from slipping off slanted dashboards, out of fumbling fingers and even the tops of moving vehicles.

“We want to be known as the Gription™ company,” Kelly says, using the trademarked neologism she coined to describe what CatTongue Grips do.

The company has contracted with numerous artists to create its array of more than 30 designs, which run the gamut from solid colors to quirky animals, flags and graphic patterns.

[video:https://youtu.be/DcGhpx0-oas]

See how the CatTongue Grips work in this video clip.

“The back of your phone is an incredibly personal space, and we identify with that. If you are going to put something on the back of your phone, it should reflect you, your personality, what you want to align yourself with,” Kelly says.

The company’s products are printed in Salt Lake City and made from fully recyclable HDPE plastic.

“It’s a focus of ours to be green and clean,” Kelly says.

CatTongue Grips now has a team of 12 people and was certified as a Woman Owned Business in October 2018.

Kelly grew up in San Diego and came to ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ for a change of scenery.

“I was intrigued by CU because I love to ski. Having been at the beach my whole life, I wanted something different,” she says. “I wanted to experience seasons!”

She double-majored in political science and international affairs. Following graduation in 1994, she returned to San Diego, where she met her husband and started a family. She earned her teaching credential and started a tutoring company.

But she hadn’t had her fill of mountains just yet, and in 2011, the family moved to Park City.

“The mountains were calling. We were looking for skiing and an outdoor lifestyle similar to what I had in Colorado,” she says. Her two children, a girl, 15, and boy, 13, are both Alpine ski racers with Park City Ski and Snowboard Team.

Kelly credits ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ with catalyzing her transition from beach girl to mountain woman and successful CEO.

“CU was just a great introduction to how great life in the mountains really is. That’s why we’re here in Park City,” she says. “Life in the mountains has just been wonderful for me and my family. It’s what gives me peace in my spare time; hiking my dogs in the woods or flying down a mountain on a pair of skis are what bring me back to center.”

So far, USC is the only university that has a licensing agreement with CatTongue Grips. Kelly says that’s in part because it is the only major school that has its own licensing division, simplifying the process. Most schools, including ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ, contract with Learfield/IMG College for licensing agreements.

“I’d really like to do something with CU in the future,” Kelly says. “It would be really great to have a Ralphie CatTongue Grip!”

Her invention and new company, CatTongue Grips, was born because no other product offered grippiness without scratching

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Maps of fallen kingdom shed light on Atlantic slave trade

Anonymous — Fri, 14 Jun 2019 00:00:28 +0000

Maps of fallen kingdom shed light on Atlantic slave trade Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 06/13/2019 - 18:00

Cay Leytham-Powell

New maps of pre-colonial Africa provide context on the slaves who departed from the Bight of Benin

Those who boarded slave ships from the Bight of Benin, or the Slave Coast of Africa, lost more than their homes—they lost their identities. New maps of a former kingdom made by a University of Colorado Boulder professor, though, may help shed some light on the centuries-old question of where they came from.

These 21 maps, including one that is animated, are the first of their kind to give boundaries to the kingdom of Oyo—which was located in present-day southwestern Nigeria, parts of Benin and Togo—right around the time of the kingdom’s collapse.

Henry Lovejoy, seen here, used Historical GIS to map the collapse
of the Oyo kingdom.

Rather than serve as a definitive source, the hope is that these maps, published this week in the Journal of Global Slavery, along with data analysis by ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ’s Laboratory of Interdisciplinary Statistical Analysis or LISA, will provide a degree of clarity for this turbulent time during the Atlantic Slave trade.

“I think having visualization really clarifies a lot of things. It’s clarified a lot of my own research, so I can only imagine how it can clarify this particular period in history in a place that had a huge impact on the America’s that people just don’t get because there aren’t maps,” said Henry Lovejoy, the study’s author and an assistant professor of history at ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ.

At its peak, the Yoruba kingdom of Oyo was one of the largest and most influential West African states. It was established in roughly the 13th century, and is best known for its cavalries that would patrol the forested savannas. The kingdom had a dark side, though, that made it infamous and ultimately led in part to its demise: its role in the African slave trade.

The kingdom of Oyo began simply as the city of Oyo, and while it steadily grew on its own, the slave trade out of the Bight of Benin brought it wealth and prosperity, leading to even greater conquests of nearby peoples. During this period, an estimated 128,000 people were captured by these cavalries during these conflicts, enslaved and sent to the Americas—particularly Brazil and Cuba.

But the question remained: from where?

Present-day maps cannot be applied to pre-colonial Africa, and what other maps do exist are inconsistent or fragmented at best. Lovejoy decided to fix that through a Historical GIS (Geographic Information Systems) experiment.

He obtained geographic and historic data from established primary and secondary sources, like the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, and then imported that data into Quantum GIS, which is an open source version of the popular mapping software. He then used a plug-in to plot the creation and disappearances of towns surrounding and within Oyo when it was at its largest and to show the coming and goings of slave ships.

Using these techniques, Lovejoy was able to show the general uncertainty surrounding Africa’s internal geography at this time, including the approximate ebb and flow of Africa’s pre-colonial boundaries and the general human migrations at play due to the slave trade.

[video:https://youtu.be/N5lTbEykHnk]

But using GIS this way doesn’t come without some controversy.

“There’s so much data that’s missing, especially if you want to get down into the level of grains of sand or erosion,” acknowledged Lovejoy. “So, it’s really becoming its own sort of class of scholarship, I think, to look at the world in terms of these places that don’t have a lot of information, but have very rich histories.”

Lovejoy just cautions that these maps should be used only as approximations and not the end-all-be-all of maps for the Oyo kingdom. But it’s a start.

Lovejoy plans to work with LISA to use these maps and the conflict data to start creating mathematical formulas and heat maps to estimate where people may have originated from. By doing this, he hopes to provide a better history and understanding of not just this region of West Africa, but also of the America’s.

“I’m just working on this small quadrant of Africa, but we’re dealing with 12 and a half million people. This is only 75,000,” said Lovejoy. “We’re getting all of these things in place; then it will be possible to sort of pull more people into the project, but I think people need to visualize it first, before they can understand what’s starting to happen.”

New maps of pre-colonial Africa provide context on the slaves who departed from the Bight of Benin

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Lawyer, political science grad leaps into kelp farming

Anonymous — Wed, 08 May 2019 20:05:42 +0000

Lawyer, political science grad leaps into kelp farming Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 05/08/2019 - 14:05

Kenna Bruner

‘Kelp is the future of feeding the world,’ says Markos Scheer, as he launches what he believes will be the largest U.S. kelp farm

As the world’s population continues growing from its current 7.7 billion people, finding innovative ways to provide food will be critical. Experts say aquaculture will play an important role in feeding the world’s burgeoning population, which is why ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ alumnus Markos Scheer is launching a new career in kelp farming.

Markos Scheer examines a frond of bull kelp on the shore of Alaska. Photo by Hillary Scheer. At the top of the page, Scheer is seen in his element. Photo by Kevin Sund.

Markos Scheer (PoliSci’90) was an attorney at Williams Kastner & Gibbs, a Pacific Northwest law firm based in Seattle, Washington. Scheer’s clients included seafood companies and fishermen from the Pacific Northwest to Alaska. For 20 years, as he represented clients whose livelihood was based in wild-caught seafood, Scheer learned about the untapped opportunities of mariculture, or the cultivation of fish and other marine life for food, in Alaska.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries estimates that the United States imports more than 80 percent of the seafood people eat. About half the world’s seafood comes from aquaculture. The U.S. imports more than $200 million in kelp products a year, which shows its potential ready to be used, Scheer said.

Riding the wave of popularity for seaweed products, Scheer recently launched the largest kelp farm of its kind in the United States—a 127-acre kelp and shellfish farm off of Prince of Wales Island in southeastern Alaska.

“Kelp is the future of feeding the world,” Scheer said. “The reason I want to grow kelp is because it has so many uses. Kelp is an amazing plant with tremendous nutritional factors. It absolutely is a superfood. It’s everything that kale is, and more. And, it tastes better. That’s my opinion.”

It’s not surprising that Scheer is interested in creating an alternative career. He has lived an unconventional life on his own terms, which has informed his venture into aquaculture.

Scheer grew up in the forests of northern Idaho with his mother, a botanist and forester. They lived a rustic lifestyle in cabins without electricity or running water. In 1982, when Scheer was 13 years old, they moved to Prince of Wales Island in southeast Alaska, where his mother was involved in reforestation. They lived in remote cabins, including a floathouse, again without running water and electricity.

At 16, wanting to strike out on his own, Scheer went through the legal process to become emancipated, which granted him adult status and the ability to sign contracts. With his newly won independence came the responsibility of earning a living, finding an apartment and paying his own bills.

He moved to Ketchikan, Alaska, where he got a job as a processor with Silver Lining Seafoods, a small startup company. With the money he earned, Scheer enrolled at the University of Southern California. In 1988, he transferred to the University of Colorado Boulder, where he studied political science.

After graduating in 1990, he moved back to Alaska and worked in management and operations with the same seafood company. In 1996, he started law school at the University of Idaho. After earning a law degree in 1999, he went to work for a firm focused on the seafood industry. With 12 years of practical experience and developing relationships in the seafood industry, he leveraged it all into a successful law practice for the next 20 years.

“We believe that the carbon footprint for our grow-out will be negative, meaning the plants will be taking more carbon dioxide out of the water than we will burn growing and harvesting it."

As part of his law practice at Williams Kastner, Scheer became involved with the nonprofit Alaska Fisheries Development Foundation, serving as a board member for several years and helping to establish the Alaska Maricultural Initiative in 2013. After developing the business plan for the initiative and learning about the potential of mariculture, he realized that the initiative needed someone to implement the plan at commercial scale for the initiative’s goals to be met.

“I realized I’m that guy,” he said. “I spent a couple of years raising enough capital to get the plan off the ground. I got it started and now I’m a kelp farmer.”

Scheer launched Premium Aquatics, the parent company for seaweed and oyster production. Seagrove Kelp Co. is the marketing brand for kelp. This fall he will plant his first crop of kelp—with a goal to plant more than 30 miles of seeded line to grow kelp. With a six-month growing period, his first kelp crop will be harvested in spring 2020.

Kelp is a form of seaweed that grows in saltwater. It has long been eaten and used for medicinal purposes. Kelp is a source of vitamins A, B1, B2, C, D and E, and minerals such as zinc, iodine, magnesium, iron, potassium, copper and calcium. Kelp products are also used in ice cream, salad dressing and pet food. Kelp farms can produce protein-rich foods with a significantly lower carbon footprint than a livestock farm, with no fertilizer or land. When added to cattle feed, kelp reduces cattle methane production up to 90 percent, Scheer said.

About 650 kinds of seaweeds grow on the West Coast. Scheer will grow bull, sugar and ribbon kelp—some of the fastest-growing plants in the world, Scheer said. In the right conditions, some kelps can grow a foot a day.

“We believe that the carbon footprint for our grow-out will be negative, meaning the plants will be taking more carbon dioxide out of the water than we will burn growing and harvesting it,” he said. “It will produce oxygen, nitrogen and other nutrients into the area where it grows.”

Next year, Scheer plans to add Pacific oysters into the operation. The site at Doyle Bay has a permit for raising 15 million oysters a year.

“It’s going to be really cool,” he said. “There are small operations in Maine and Alaska, but I’m not aware of anything else in North America that will be at this scale. What I love about this product is that everything is a positive to sustainably grow an indigenous species of kelp. The environment grows it for you.”

Scheer is eager to partner with CU students on research projects to study the environmental impacts of growing more than 100 acres of kelp in a single location and whether the nutritional characteristics of kelp change when grown at different sites.

“My political science degree from CU led to me to law school,” Scheer said. “All of the components in my life were part of the learning process that gave me the confidence to jump off the dock and do this. I had no anticipation when I was 20 years old and graduating from CU that in 2019, I would be a kelp farmer in Prince Wales Island. You never know how things will turn out until you try.”

Scheer lives with his wife, a teacher, and two sons, 14 and 6, in a house with running water and electricity.

He credits ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ and his political science degree for propelling him toward law school. And he credits Amelia “Jay” Dilworth (Educ’63) who convinced him to believe in his potential to define what he wanted his life to be, and that eventually led him to ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ. Dilworth was the teacher in the one-room schoolhouse Scheer attended in Alaska.

“I didn’t realize it at the time, but she is the one that lit the fire that brought me to where I am today,” Scheer said. “When I was 15, I made the decision to make my own way and went out on my own. Jay went to CU, and that is what made me consider it.”

Scheer’s advice to ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ students is to work hard, believe in yourself, take risks but be deliberate and informed about it and don’t wait for others to solve problems for you.”

‘Kelp is the future of feeding the world,’ says Markos Scheer, as he launches what he believes will be the largest U.S. kelp farm.

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Fourth graders dig into pop music and poetry at ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ

Anonymous — Sat, 06 Apr 2019 00:23:21 +0000

Fourth graders dig into pop music and poetry at ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 04/05/2019 - 18:23

Clint Talbott

As they learn how writers revise their work and use literary devices, the students gear up for a school assembly led by Australian rap star Nelson Dialect

When superstar Taylor Swift writes a song, she deploys the same creative tools used by a girl named Henley, a Denver fourth grader.

Henley, a fourth-grade student from Asbury Elementary School in Denver, recites her poem "Bullies Stand Down" during a poetry workshop at the Innisfree Poetry Bookstore and Café, an event that was part of Pop in the Classroom at ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ. Photos and video by Justin Golightly. At the top of page, Taylor Swift performs in 2018. Getty Images.

In a first draft of her hit song “Out of the Woods,” for instance, Swift repeats the phrase “I remember” three times in a row. In the studio recording, however, she sings it once.

Henley noticed the difference when she and her classmates were in a sound room at the University of Colorado Boulder comparing an early version and final rendition of Swift’s hit song and others. She said the final version is better. And that’s the point of the exercise: learning that writing well means revising carefully.

This is one of several eureka moments during a half-day poetry boot camp organized by Adam Bradley, ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ English professor and director of the Laboratory of Race and Popular Culture—or RAP Lab. The lab’s Pop Lyrics in the Classroom program brought kids from Asbury Elementary School in Denver to Boulder last month.

But why teach elementary-school kids about rhyme, meter and the process of revision? What do popular songs have to with the art of language? And who cares about poetry?

Bradley and teachers at Asbury Elementary strive to help kids learn—and love—writing, which can be equally wonderful and laborious. Popular songs are crammed with literary devices, and students who understand this are more likely to love wordplay, or at least feel comfortable tackling essays, book reports and, later, professional writing.

In previous years, Bradley ran a program called Hip Hop in the Classroom, which worked with high school and middle school students. This year’s program, which will culminate in May with a school assembly led by Australian rapper Nelson Dialect, focuses on younger children.

Desi Kennedy is a personalized learning coach at Asbury who taught Bradley’s daughter in Boulder and has known Bradley’s family for years. At Asbury, Kennedy’s role is to connect students’ learning to “authentic real-world experiences.”

The songs kids love teach them the tools of poetry—rhythm, rhyme, figurative language—without the intimidation that some students feel when approaching a more conventional work of literature."
—Adam Bradley

As Kennedy devised the fourth-grade poetry lesson plan with an Asbury literacy teacher, “we brainstormed and imagined ways we could integrate rap music and poetry in collaboration with our music teacher.”

Then they consulted Bradley.

Pop in the Classroom dovetails perfectly with those aims, Bradley said. The goal is to use the comfort students have with rap and popular music of all types as a way to open the door to literary studies, the practice of composition, the discipline of close reading—“all the things we want them to learn in the language arts.”

Bradley and his graduate and undergraduate students in the RAP Lab have developed lesson plans for younger students, and those plans were executed last month.

Josette Lorig, a PhD candidate in English and lab manager of the RAP Lab, records sounds in the "sample songs" exercise, in which kids made and recorded sounds such as chirping or clapping, and Lorig mixed the sounds into a song.

The Asbury students’ field trip to Boulder included a visit to Innisfree Poetry Bookstore and Café, where café co-owner Brian Buckley discussed Robert Frost’s poetry and the kids’ favorite words, which included “fiddlesticks,” “spatula” and “sopapilla.”

He also invited kids to the stage to recite their own poetry. Henley was one of the first to volunteer, reciting her poem about bullying, “Bullies Stand Down.”

The fourth graders then went to the RAP Lab on campus, where they absorbed five sections of poetic instruction:

“Funny figures,” which built students’ understanding of literary terms like alliteration, chiasmus and zeugma (see info box).
“Cooler than…,” which helped students learn about similes and metaphors.
“Rough drafts,” in which students listened to first drafts and final versions of popular songs, including “Out of the Woods” and “Take on Me,” by a-ha.
“Song-righting,” in which students tried to fill in the blanks of popular songs with key words missing.
“Sample songs,” during which kids made and recorded sounds such as chirping or clapping, and a RAP Lab member mixed the sounds into a song.

Judging by the fourth-graders’ reactions, the exercises were fun, and Bradley said that’s the idea. Teaching composition, revision and close reading in abstract terms can seem wooden and boring to kids.

Nelson Dialect, an Australian Hip Hop artist, poses with a group of Whittier Elementary School students in Boulder recently. Image courtesy of Nelson Dialect.

"Pop songs are laboratories for language,” Bradley says. “The songs kids love teach them the tools of poetry—rhythm, rhyme, figurative language—without the intimidation that some students feel when approaching a more conventional work of literature. I’m not saying that Ariana Grande should replace Shakespeare, but her songs can help us read Shakespeare—and everything else—better.”

In the final element of the program with Asbury, Nelson Dialect will perform at a school assembly and will do a freestyle rap, in which kids prompt him to create lyrics on the spot.

In an email interview, Dialect said his grandmother, who was a poet, fostered his interest in language. He started reading and writing poetry and rap lyrics when he was about 11. “As I discovered hip hop music through my older brother’s collection of albums, I was fascinated by the rhythm, storytelling and wordplay,” he said.

Like Bradley, Dialect thinks the effort can help the kids: “If we can encourage the students to enjoy writing, it can strengthen their confidence and comprehension of their day-to-day lives in a creative way beyond social media, text-messaging or essays, which can be routine and standardized.”

Bradley said he hopes the students will leave next month’s assembly with “a greater sense of wonder at the art that surrounds them—the music, the films, the things we take for granted in popular culture.”

The hope is that students will be “empowered” to know that when an idea floats into their minds, “they can grasp it, look at it from all angles, let it grow. . . They will understand themselves as capable of creation, and they will have the tools to observe the creative energies that are around them at all times.” (See video below with Bradley’s five tips on using language and music to express your creativity.)

Henley, the fourth grader, has gotten that message. She said she hopes next year’s fourth-grade class will be able to do the field trip, too. Her favorite part: “making rap and poems out of similes. And the sound room.”

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TtavnrWqlg]

Adam Bradley's Five Tips
on how to use language and music to express your creativity

Listen like a child
Speak in simile
Don’t throw out your demo tapes
Sing like you know the words even when you don’t
Enjoy the silence
(see video for explanation)

Literary devices in pop songs

Anadiplosis: “A figure of word repetition that links two phrases, clauses, lines, or stanzas by repeating the word at the end of the first one at the beginning of the second.”

“Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry” — Don McLean, “American Pie” (1971)

Chiasmus: “The repetition of a pair of sounds, words, phrases, or ideas in the reverse order, producing an abba structure”

“And if you can’t be with the one you love, honey, Love the one you’re with.” — Stephen Stills, “Love the One You’re With” (1970)

Zeugma: “The use of a single word, most often a noun or a verb, to govern multiple clauses, often with divergent contexts.”

“You took my heart and my keys and my patience” — Rihanna, “Work” (2016)

As they learn how writers revise their work and use literary devices, the students gear up for a school assembly led by an Australian rap star.

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Reaching the top of Frito-Lay, alum chose a radically different path

Anonymous — Mon, 18 Mar 2019 22:26:22 +0000

Reaching the top of Frito-Lay, alum chose a radically different path Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 03/18/2019 - 16:26

Clay Bonnyman Evans

An interest in big-picture questions is a common thread in Brock Leach’s success in business and ministry

As a young man, Brock Leach was advised to gain life experience before entering the ministry. This he did, working 24 years at Frito-Lay and serving as its CEO. Now, he’s followed the calling he had in high school: He’s become a Unitarian Universalist minister.

Brock Leach is shown in 2000 in Los Angeles International Airport, when he was president and CEO of Tropicana Products Inc. He left the corporate world in 2006 to become a Unitarian Universalist minister. Photo: Getty Images.

The University of Colorado Boulder was his first stop as he launched his first career and, he says, instrumental in establishing his second.

Leach began to bloom upon entering high school the year his family moved to Colorado. He was exhilarated to have moved from crowded, sub-par schools in Michigan to the excellent and (then) small Lewis Palmer High School in Monument, where he would graduate with a class of just 78 and earn a prestigious Boettcher Scholarship.

“For me, it was just a phenomenal, incredibly liberating experience in every way,” says Leach of coming to Colorado, where he graduated magna cum laude in economics in 1980.

He also found liberation beyond school walls, through a church youth group engaged in outreach, or what is now often called social-justice work. The group traveled around the state to do stuff like work alongside migrant farm workers, serve at a detox center, and help build a Head Start center in Conejos, Colorado.

“The guy who set it up believed that the work of the church happened in the world, not in the church,” Leach says. “It was a liberating experience to actually go out and do something in some small way to make a difference for somebody else.”

Leach was so moved that he pondered going into ministry, but his minister mentor suggested he first gain more life experience.

“He said, ‘I want you to keep doing what you are doing. Ministry can happen later. Go try different things,’” Leach recalls.

Leach decided to act on that advice, earning two degrees—a BA in economics from the University of Colorado Boulder and a master’s in business administration from the University of Chicago—and building a stellar, 24-year career in the food industry before finally becoming a minister.

The liberal arts gave me a framework for acquiring knowledge for whatever I wanted to do down the road. And the experience I had in those four years, the people I met, the life stories I touched, all helped me figure out who I was and allowed me to steer a career of my own making.”

“I’ve always been interested in big-picture questions,” he says. “What is the meaning of life? What are we doing here?”

Leach’s journey began at ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ, which he chose over nearby Colorado College because, “I wanted a more cosmopolitan experience.”

“CU was an incredible opportunity for me to experience life on so many levels, and in the process learn so much about myself,” he says.

Besides the usual rigors of attending class and taking tests, Leach had gigs as a night janitor in a molecular biology lab, at a summer camp on campus and working the red-eye shift as a desk clerk at the late Rodeway Inn motel.

“Everything in the world that happens in the middle of the night,” he says wryly, “happens at the Rodeway Inn.”

He also found time to serve as co-president of the College of Arts and Sciences student government and work on the student guide and other publications.

Intending to pursue a career in nonprofit or human-services administration, he went on to earn an MBA at the University of Chicago. But with no great prospects in human services on the horizon after he graduated, he worked briefly in hospital administration, then took a job with snack-food giant Frito-Lay, owned by PepsiCo.

“I thought I’d be there for a couple of years,” Leach says.

“Then 24 years went by.”

He made the most of those 24 years, rising all the way to CEO of Frito-Lay North America. Leach’s tenure as CEO covered everything from the curious rise and fall of Olestra, a calorie- and fat-free fat-substitute developed by Proctor & Gamble, to his “claim to fame as the father of Tostitos restaurant-style” tortilla chips.

“You’d be surprised. A lot of science goes into the processing to make a fresh, fragile, crisp chip,” he says. “That became a huge business.”

I’d done what I wanted to do. I was really lucky; I could afford to quit and go to seminary,"

He also served as CEO of Tropicana shortly after PepsiCo acquired the beverage maker in 1998. He was later named chief innovation officer for PepsiCo, tasked with improving the “healthfulness” of the company’s global product portfolio and overseeing its public health and wellness policy.

Brock Leach running a half-marathon in Iceland. Photo courtesy of Brock Leach.

Through it all, Leach never forgot the powerful experience of helping others he’d experienced with his church youth group in Monument. After many years atop the corporate ladder, he thought he might just have accumulated enough life experience to pursue his dream of ministry.

“I just got to a place where I was really grateful, and I’d done what I wanted to do. I was really lucky; I could afford to quit and go to seminary,” he says.

His children having graduated from high school, he went on to earn a Master of Divinity degree at Meadville Lombard Theological School, a Unitarian Universalism seminary in Chicago. Historically focused on social justice, the Unitarian Universalism denomination emphasizes spiritual growth over creed, going so far as to accept members who are atheist or agnostic.

“We are fundamentally humanist,” Leach says of the church. “All of our principles emphasize the inherent worth and dignity of all people and our interdependence with one another.”

Upon graduation, he served as vice president of innovation for the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, where he helped create and launch the Unitarian Universalism College of Social Justice. Now executive consultant for innovative ministries for the Unitarian Universalist Association, he is focused on how to support people, who are seeking something other than a traditional, Sunday-morning-go-to-church model of community, including disaffected millennials and people of color.

“They feel a need to be in a community. But what they don’t want is to go somewhere on Sunday morning and have somebody preach at them,” Leach says.

Many such people are finding and building community in everything from fitness classes to group meditations. Rather than try to funnel such people toward a more traditional church setting, Leach says the goal is to “help the denomination lean in to support these innovators.”

He credits not just his liberal-arts education, but also his broad, real-world experience at ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ with preparing him for his two divergent careers.

“The liberal arts gave me a framework for acquiring knowledge for whatever I wanted to do down the road,” he says. “And the experience I had in those four years, the people I met, the life stories I touched, all helped me figure out who I was and allowed me to steer a career of my own making.”

An interest in big-picture questions is a common thread in Brock Leach’s success in business and ministry.

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2019 magazine

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